Style Alert

Did you know the national average is now approximately $30,000? The cost of a wedding rises each year, but not just for the couple set to wed. If you receive a wedding invitation there are important logistics to keep in mind before you RSVP “yes.” As a guest, it’s important to take into account costs for attire, travel, hotel accommodations, and the wedding gift. Although no specific etiquette exists for wedding gifts, a thoughtful and well-planned wedding gift can wish the newlyweds well during this new chapter in their lives together. The wedding planners at The Manor have some guidelines and suggestions for selecting the best wedding gift to give the honorary couple.Read more…

When guests receive your wedding invitations in the mail, they get their first glimpse of the elegance and style of your wedding to come, as well as an indication of the formality of your event. So much information is conveyed through the design and wording of your invitation, but what is most strongly received by your guests is excitement to join you at your wedding ceremony and reception, especially when they learn that you’ll be married at one of the best wedding venues in New Jersey, a grand wedding ballroom or lovely wedding garden setting that they have heard so much about or seen in top wedding blogs. Now, thanks to you, it’s their turn to experience an elegant wedding at one of the premiere wedding locations in the state. Read more…

Your wedding guests enjoy being handed a cocktail or champagne flute when they first enter your wedding venue, but one thing they’re looking for is their placecard telling them which table they’ve been assigned to.

In the past, guest placecards were quite basic, names written on tented papers, set up on one big table. That often caused a logjam of guests looking for their names, turning this early moment of your wedding into a bit of a stressful experience, and not much of an impressive one. But now, wedding designers have turned the guest placecard arrangement into an art form, creating a stunning display as well as making the process easier for guests.Read more…

Wedding cake toppers have turned into a great way for brides and grooms to personalize their wedding cake, and the current trends in wedding cake toppers give wedding couples very creative options for topping their gorgeous wedding cakes elegantly…or amusingly.

Here are the top trends in wedding cake toppers 2014:

Words. The cake topper is a sign, in wooden, metal, acrylic or other material letters, saying “Mr. & Mrs,” “We Do,” “Blessed,” and a top design shown on Pinterest wedding pins: “Best Day Ever.” In a separate style of cake topper, Words are displayed on paper flags stuck into the top cake layer.

As a popular New Jersey wedding venue, we’ve had the pleasure of hosting countless brides, each with their own unique style, which has extended to the choice of jewelry they wore on their wedding day as well. Some have been extravagantly embellished; others have taken a completely natural approach and worn no jewelry at all.

At the end of the day, your personal style will ultimately be the best guide for selecting what jewelry feels right for you; after all, it’s your big day, so why not celebrate who you are? That said, as the center of attention you’ll still want to make the best choices within your general aesthetic to make sure your beauty can shine through and is not upstaged by your ornamentation. Read more…

As a popular NJ wedding reception location, we’ve hosted countless couples and their guests. We’ve helped to create everything from elegant, intimate and sedate wedding celebrations to the most raucous and energetic roof raising parties.But regardless of whether you’d like your wedding reception to be more refined or an all-out party, we’ve found that across-the-board, the best wedding receptions and those that are the most fondly remembered after the day have been those that engage and involve as many of the guests in attendance as possible.When you can create a shared experience and a sense of participation, along with giving each guest the feeling that they were truly welcomed as part of the celebration, your wedding will leave an extra-special impression with everyone who attends—even those that you might think are a bit harder to please. Read more…

Autumn is a wonderful time of year for a warm and intimate wedding reception. Many of our brides and grooms enjoy the fall so much they set their wedding date at the heart of the season and design their wedding theme to match it.

By fall, most guests are no longer focused on making plans to get away as during the summer, or booked with weekend activities. As the weather cools, thoughts have turned to the coming holidays and returning home to spend time with family. With a chill in the air, the more lush fashions, and the changing colors all around, it is a romantic time of year, ideal for a fall wedding. Read more…

Pinterest is so much more than a collection of pretty pictures; for brides, Pinterest provides a look at the top wedding trends (so that they can decide if they’d like to follow the trends or avoid them!) in every wedding planning category from wedding gowns to wedding flowers, décor, photography, rings, and especially wedding locations and wedding food and drinks.

When you’re researching and booking wedding vendors and sites, it’s important for your wedding experts and wedding site managers to get a crystal-clear understanding of what you want for your wedding day. And as they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” When you can present to your wedding experts and wedding site team a collection of images of what you want, and what you don’t want, the experts to whom you entrust your wedding vision get that clear picture of what you both would like, and they can then start creating it for you, right down to the garnish on the appetizers you call a Must. Read more…

The question, “Which is better for a wedding reception, a sit-down wedding dinner or a buffet” can only be answered by you. The two styles are different, but each offers elements of indulging your wedding guests with the finest wedding menu items. Your personal decision on which style of wedding dinner serving style depends only on how you’d like your guests to delve into their delicious wedding fare.

A sit-down wedding dinner, of course, consists of several plated courses served to your seated wedding guests. You select from a first course, perhaps a soup, salad, entrée, perhaps an intermezzo, and each course is brought to your guests’ tables, with friendly, experienced wedding servers bringing guests the entrees they desire. Read more…

Every one of our New Jersey and New York City wedding couples has a marvelous, creative marriage proposal story, and we’re impressed at the lengths to which grooms are going to pop the question in the most imaginative and personalized ways. Here are just some of the marriage proposal ideas we’d like to share to inspire you or someone you know: Read more…